Regulatory compliance is rarely considered a strategic technology topic. In beauty and consumer goods groups, however, it constitutes one of the main points of friction in the product launch chain. Each new formula, packaging or marketing claim must now navigate a global regulatory maze that has become increasingly unstable. It is in this segment, still largely managed via spreadsheets, PDFs and manual checks, that Certo intends to build its trajectory.
The French startup announces a $4 million seed round led by Daphni, with the participation of Entrepreneurs First, Motier Ventures and Transpose Platform.
Founded by Bastien Deliège-Coste and Jean Duquenne, the company is developing a regulatory compliance platform powered by artificial intelligence for the beauty and consumer goods industries. The objective is to automate regulatory checks related to ingredients, formulations, marketing claims, packaging and access to international markets.
International groups must now manage continuous regulatory inflation, in particular new European regulations on microplastics, packaging waste and even allergens add new layers of complexity to compliance chains. Some companies operate in more than 150 markets simultaneously, each with its own rules regarding permitted ingredients, formulations or marketing claims.
In this context, regulatory departments are gradually becoming a major operational bottleneck. Each validation delay can slow down a product launch, generate reformulation costs or block access to certain markets. However, the tools used often remain inherited from an old documentary logic.
“Regulatory reviews are the critical path of every product launch, but the process has not changed in decades,” explains Bastien Deliège-Coste, CEO and co-founder of Certo.
The company claims to have built a continuously updated proprietary regulatory infrastructure spanning the European Union, United States, China, Japan, South Korea and several Latin American markets, among others. This data layer is supported by several specialized AI agents capable of analyzing a product according to applicable regulations, the company’s internal standards and the constraints imposed by distributors.
After generalist co-pilots, a new generation of AI startups is now trying to establish itself in highly constrained vertical professions where traceability and auditability of responses become essential. In these regulated environments, the value lies not only in the AI model itself, but in the quality of proprietary databases, document structuring and the ability to produce verifiable reasoning.
The startup already boasts deployments with international beauty groups, distributors and regulated companies in Europe and the United States. “We didn’t start by building a product and then looking for customers,” explains Jean Duquenne, CTO and co-founder. “We started with the workflows of the regulatory teams. »
The funds raised should enable Certo to strengthen its engineering and regulatory teams, extend its multi-market coverage and accelerate its commercial development in Europe and the United States.
